An AA Test is not a classic type of campaign, so you won’t find it in the list of campaigns you’ll be able to create. In fact, an AA test is not really a test at all!
An AA test is a specific use case relative to an A/B test campaign, used to gain more insights about your website by tracking events or specific behaviors using the AB Tasty tag.
This is typically an A/B test for which:
- The traffic allocation is 0% on the original version and 100% on the variation.
- The variation is empty: you don’t create any new content to push so the campaign is totally transparent for your visitors.
- You’ve set-up goals to follow in the reports.
So, what’s the point of an AA Test?
- To gather baseline data: All market analytics tools track events differently (technologically and also in the way they calculate certain metrics). Due to this, it’s normal to observe differences between the metrics displayed by two different analytics tools. With an AA Test, you can collect your visitors’ main KPIs using AB Tasty and establish a baseline to analyze your future campaigns more accurately.
- Analysis before and after revamp: If you’re planning a large revamp of an important feature on your site and you can’t A/B test the two versions, it’s important to have a record of the previous performance of this feature. For example, let’s say you want to change the structure of your navigation bar. If you launch an AA Test before the release, you’ll get the exact click rates for each tab. After the revamp, another AA Test will enable you to collect the new click rates on the new tabs and, after several weeks, you’ll be able to measure the impact of your release on the navigation behavior.
- Click zones or segment performance: You can also use AA Tests to track the behavior of your visitors with different product categories to compare them or analyze their performance per segment.
You’ve chosen to create an AA Test
An AA Test consists of tracking events on one or several pages, for example your homepage, basket page, etc.
Part 1: The main ways to create a new campaign
AA Tests, just like other types of campaign, can be created directly from the campaign dashboard, audience manager dashboard, Chrome extension, or by duplicating or transforming an existing campaign.
Directly from the dashboard
AA Tests are A/B tests that are configured in a slightly different way. To create one from the dashboard, hover over the call to action Create. This will bring up the following list. Click on A/B test to enter the A/B test creation workflow.
Using the Chrome extension
AB Tasty has released a Chrome extension that allows you to create a campaign directly from the specific page of your website.
To download the Chrome extension, please follow this link. To get more information about the AB Tasty Chrome extension, please visit our article. This option is useful to load logged pages (anchor).
Duplications and transformations
If you want to duplicate a former A/B test to create a new one (with or without modifying some elements of the set-up), select the Duplicate option on your dashboard.
- Click the three dots on the right of the campaign line you want to duplicate.
- Click on the first option – Duplicate.
- The duplication modal opens. You can modify the name of your new campaign, otherwise the name will be the same as the existing campaign but with (duplicate) added to the end.
- Select the account where you wish to store your new campaign.
For more information about duplications and specific transformation use cases, refer to our specific article on this topic.
Part 2: The Main Information Page
The Main Information Page is the first step in setting up your new A/B test campaign.
General use case: Pasting in the URLs you wish to test
At the top of the page, the dropdown is preselected to A/B test. At this stage, you can select another kind of test if needed.
The fields Name and Sample URL are mandatory and need to be filled in to access the Save button.
We recommend you use the termAA Test in the name you use because AA Tests do not exist as a searchable “type” of test, so your campaign will be categorized as an A/B test.
The Sample URL field should be filled in with the URL of the exact page you want to test or a sample of the pages that share the same layout as the page you want to test. It will be used in your campaign:
- To load the visual editor.
- As a pre-filled targeted URL in the targeting step, but it won’t be the final targeted page of your campaign. See our article on targeting for more information.
❗Caution: Don’t use URL parameters in the sample URL fields, otherwise you won't be able to save the step.
⭐Tip: Filling the Hypothesis field is a best practice to help collaboration between teams and so everyone can easily understand the objective of your AA Test (for example, tracking all elements in your product pages). This will avoid wasting time looking for the changes in the visual editor.
At this stage you can choose between two ways to create your A/B test variation and track your events:
- Using the Visual Editor, which gives you wysiwyg trackers and widget trackers, and allows you to add JavaScript code directly.
- Using the Code Editor to implement your tracking by entirely using code.
Either way you’ll be able to come back to the Main Information Page to switch between these editors if you need to. Once your choices are set up, click Save & Go to next step.
Good to know 💡
Once you click on Save, your A/B test will be generated (with a unique ID) and will appear in your Tests dashboard. If you return to the Main Information Page, everything will be editable except the type of test (this dropdown won’t be available anymore). At this stage, if you need to change the type of test, you should restart the campaign creation process from scratch or transform your current A/B test to another kind of test using the duplication action on the dashboard.
Specific use case: Logged pages
By default, when you load a page that requires an authentication (a client account, for example), or a conversion funnel page, the page displayed in the editor will be empty or will show an error because it often requires session information (for example, products to be displayed in the cart page). To avoid this issue, you need to inject the source code of the page:
You can do this in two ways:
- Using the Load editor with embedded source code option (seen in the screenshot above).
- Or by using the Apply HTML option within the AB Tasty Chrome extension – for details, see our specific article on the Chrome extension.
To Load editor with embedded source code, paste the page’s source code directly into AB Tasty. To do this:
- Go to the URL you want to load in the editor.
- Right click Inspect.
- In the Elements tab of the console, go to the first line of code: the <html> tag
- Right click it and go to Copy > OuterHTML – this will copy the entire source code of the page with all the scripts and necessary information.
- Paste this code into the dedicated window within the Main Information step.
❗Caution: The URL field must contain your URL or you won’t be able to save and proceed to the next step.
- Click Save – the page will load in the editor and you can apply your changes as usual.
Part 3: The content of your campaign
There are two ways to create trackers for your campaign in AB Tasty:
Using the Visual Editor:
This enables you to add trackers to your campaign, such as click trackings, custom trackings and tracker widgets. For more information about setting these up, click the links above.
Using the Code Editor:
The code editor enables you to insert JavaScript code without having to load the editor. It’s a great solution for developers who want to save time. To learn how to use the Code Editor, refer to our Code Editor Guide.
Part 4: Goals
Once you’ve set-up your trackers, you can preconfigure your future reporting to easily identify the metrics needed to track your primary goal. The notions of primary and secondary goals are not significant with AA Tests because the objective here is to recall all the trackers you’ve set-up in the editor.
To learn about different types of metrics and how to set them up, see the following guide.
Metrics are categorized into different sections:
- Action tracking: All the trackers you’ve set-up in the visual editor – note, these are not retroactive.
- Page tracking: The pageviews you’ve recorded in your account plus the option to create new ones (for more on this, see our guide). These are retroactive.
- Custom tracking: The action tracking and other tracking you’ve set-up by adding code in the editor or in the global code of the account (for more on this, see our guide). These are not retroactive.
- Browsing metrics, including bounce rate, pages per session and visited rate. To learn more about these metrics and how they are calculated, read the following guide. These are retroactive.
- Transaction metrics: Here you’ll find the transaction indicators you’ve set-up in your account. To use these, you need to install our transaction tag on your website. For more on this, see the following guide. Note, these are also retroactive.
❗Caution: Once your campaign has started, you can add secondary goals, but action tracking such as clicks or widgets won’t be retroactive in your reporting and will be calculated from the date you added these metrics as goals. All the other goals will be calculated from the date you launched your AA Test, even if you add them afterwards.
You can add up to 49 secondary goals.
Save before leaving the page. Your set-up will constitute the basis of your future reporting to analyze the result of your test. Each chosen metric will appear as a goal in the reporting.
Hiding transaction indicators
When you implement a transaction tag, the transaction affiliation (TA) name you assigned to your transaction tag automatically appears as a transaction indicator in the Transaction section of the Goals setup step of a campaign.
For more information on how to configure a transaction tag, see our guide to Installing a transaction tag.
The more transaction tags you implement, the longer the transaction indicators list will be. These transaction indicators can then be chosen as primary or secondary goals for your campaign.
The transaction indicators hide option enables you to clear and lighten the transaction indicators list by hiding out-of-date transaction indicators.
This makes it easier to find the transaction indicator(s) you want to set as primary or secondary goals for your campaign, and to get rid of any obsolete indicators.
Before deleting transaction indicators, and if you have made any modification in the step (such as adding or removing a goal), click Save to ensure all goals are up-to-date. To hide transaction indicators from the Transaction list, follow these steps:
- Click Hide transaction indicators
- From the pop-in, hover over the indicator you want to hide from the list and click the trash icon
- Repeat this action for the other indicators you want to delete
- Click the Hide button to confirm
Heads up⚡
You can’t hide an indicator that is used in one or several other campaigns, whether they are live or paused, therefore the option to hide these is disabled.
Good to know💡
Hidden transaction indicators will be hidden from this list for all campaigns but not deleted permanently. If you wish to delete one permanently, you should do it directly in your website code.
Retrieving hidden transaction indicators
You can retrieve the list of all transaction indicators you have hidden in your account settings by visiting Account management > Transaction indicators management.
To reactivate a hidden transaction indicator, hover over it and click Activate. The indicator will disappear from this page and you’ll be able to see it in the transaction indicators list in the Goals setup step of a campaign. You will now be able to use it as a primary or secondary goal for your campaigns.
Part 5: Targeting
Targeting is one of the most important steps of the campaign set-up. This determines WHERE your campaign is visible on your website (on every page, on specific pages, on only one page, etc.), for WHOM it is visible(all traffic, mobile users only, etc.) and in WHICH conditions the campaign is displayed (after a certain number of pages, when the weather outside drops below a certain temperature, etc.).
Please refer to our complete guide about targeting to learn how to set up segments of visitors, saved pages and saved triggers to save time in future campaign set-ups.
Part 6: Traffic allocation
The traffic allocation step enables you to choose if you want to test all your targeted traffic or just a small part of it.
In the case of an AA Test, you have to direct 100% of your traffic to the variation.
To learn more about traffic allocation, read our complete guide.
Part 7: Advanced options
📎Note: Advanced options are not mandatory.
Third-party integrations (analytics)
You can link your AB Test to your analytics tool, allowing you to analyze your testing cohorts in your analytics dashboards. AB Tasty can easily be integrated with many popular analytics tools. The API connection can be set up at the account level, which will apply the integration to all subsequent campaigns automatically. To learn more, refer to the following guide.
If you want to set up analytics integration for only one specific A/B test, find your analytics tool in the dropdown and select it. Some analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, require additional settings, which will appear in a form panel:
Once launched, your test will send data to all the analytics services that you have configured here.
Part 8: QA
The QA of a campaign can be used to double check whether all your trackers are properly set-up. To learn more, refer to our complete guide on QA & QA Assistant.
Part 9: Scheduler
If you’d like your AA Test to start at a specific time on a specific day, or for it to pause at a specific time, see our guide to scheduling.
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